investing long term is a 'perceived' risk imo; much riskier to daytrade any strategy, where your acc will usually slowly but surely be depleted. arguments can be made in favor of investing after looking at long term approaches returns/blow outs against those for daytrading. rarely a daytrader can be profitable and very often his acc goes belly up, not so when investing although the exposure to risk is greater, it doesn't necessary translate into huge and more consistent losses.
bitstream, my trading can be compared to a remora fish, i simply ride part of the wave, i have no interest in catching the whole wave or being a whale. I use other peoples mistakes and vice versa to my advantage. If you have the right tools, research, strict entry/exit policy, healthy capitalization, trade liquid markets, use high leverage and of course balls, YOU can not prove that consistent returns that beat most TA strategies can not be generated.
A lot of my buddies are pretty educated people and hold degrees. How many of them CAN start a business and make it into a success, probably only 5% of them, if not less. Daytrading to me is like being in business, I do not need to watch RSI, MACD, etc or do fundamental research, neither do I need to backtest the strategy to later autotrade it, I guess that's why they do not last, simply because they are not based on the evolving behavior of a market, but on it's past perfomance. Autotrading in my opinion is another way for software providers to generate more income for themselves, not to make us more succesful at what we do.
u see my dad's (dear soul be so he rest in peace) investments have been able to survive the dot com bubble bust and end up (at the end of this yr) with decent returns covering almost all of those losses, same can be said for many, many unsophisticated investors I know personally. infact as soon as some of those investors begun to trade on line they started to lose money at the speed of light: u are infact agreeing with me that u need an edge to be consistently profitable in active daytrading pursuit, that's not the case for investing where anyone with basic knowledge of the mkt and decent instincts for catching good and stable companies can achieve if not surpass returns made by daytraders, while others less fortunate, while will not make any profits, still have less of a chance to blow up their entire accounts in a couple of months.
All this time just to BE? (no disrespect intended) u see my dad's (dear soul be so he rest in peace) investments have been able to survive the dot com bubble bust and end up (at the end of this yr) with decent returns covering almost all of those losses
Bitstream, happy for you. But we are really talking about daytrading here. I mentioned investing approach as an example. I am not saying that autotrading strategies do not work, they probably do, but my argument is that your P/L depends on an algorithm executed by a machine and I bet there are/were/will be many times when that autotrade is incorrect, when manual approach can be a lot more safe, if, of course, applied correctly. I haven't seen many autotrading strategies, my opnion is based on logical analyses of the principle involved.
Well said... that's not the case for investing where anyone with basic knowledge of the mkt and decent instincts for catching good and stable companies can achieve if not surpass returns made by daytraders, while others less fortunate, while will not make any profits, still have less of a chance to blow up their entire accounts in a couple of months.
freakin' hell mate, people lost a fortune back then and never recovered....I think make up for those losses and some its quite an achievement in itself! ;p
I just cannot believe this poll, are there really traders that can make an AVERAGE of 1% a day? Consistently year after year? I assume 1% is on the TOTAL amount of equity in the account...correct? Please do not lie...I am getting ready to put on a real depression. The poll needs to be clarified... Michael B. P.S. My gawd! If I had a triple digit yield on my money per year...well...my ego would be unmanageable...and I would load up the truck and move to the Hamptons (sang with Jed's voice)
ElectricSavant, maybe your misunderstanding what can and can't be achieved lies in the amount of posts you have been posting. How do you find the time to trade man? I am kidding. You can not learn how to make money on the BBs. P.S. Compare daytrading results to actual business perfomance, some make millinons, others make a lot less.